The Bad News for China’s Economy Could Be Good News for the Climate

The cost of a booming economy: A cyclist wears a mask amid the smog in Beijing covered on June 23, 2015.

Photo by STR/AFP/Getty Images

If there’s a silver lining to the smoggy gray cloud hanging over the Chinese economy this week, it’s that the country’s slowing economic activity could be good for the environment. China has been focused on reducing emissions: Under a landmark agreement signed with the United States last November, it pledged to peak its emissions by 2030. And under the commitment it has put forward ahead of the U.N. climate talks in Paris in December, it has pledged to increase the share of non–fossil fuels in its energy mix to 20 percent by the same year and reduce its carbon intensity—the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of GDP—by 60 percent to 65 percent below 2005 levels. But economic conditions may play as much of a role in its emissions reduction over the next few years as government policy.

As the Wall Street Journal reported last month, the “war on pollution” declared by Xi Jinping’s government in response to public outrage over notoriously polluted air, water, and soil has been aided by the bleak state of the country’s heavy industries. Particulate levels in Beijing are finally falling, and the capital has been blessed with unusual stretches of blue-sky days, in part thanks to the government’s crackdown on coal-fired power plants, but also because factories all around Beijing are shutting down.

In one promising sign, even amid this week’s turmoil, Chinese legislators are considering an air pollution law that would give the central government more power to punish negligent companies and local authorities and impose new caps on coal consumption.

If the downturn might be, on balance, good news for the world’s climate, it’s bad news for the countries whose economies are tied in large part to fueling China’s explosive growth. Though it recovered somewhat Tuesday amid an overall market rebound, the already collapsing price of oil hit six-year lows on Monday and coal futures hit 12-year-lows last week amid fears that the country’s insatiable appetite for energy is coming to an end. As the New York Timesreports Tuesday, the low price of oil, driven by falling Chinese demand as well as stubbornly high production from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, is driving political instability in countries including Russia, Venezuela, and Iraq.